POETRY2
POETRY. WHAT CONSTITUTES POETRY. I mama nothing can ho added to Milton's definition or rule of poetry, that it ought to be simple, sensuous, and impaseioned ; that is to say, single in conception, abounding in sensible images, and informing them all with the spirit of the mInd.—Coliamos. Construction vs. CriticIsm.—Up to this point, the student has been instructed how to perform certain functions of speech. To converse, to write a letter or an essay, to make a speech that, if not eloquent, is at least not discreditable—•of all these things the student may learn not only what constitutes excellence in them, but how he may attain it. lie has been taught not only how to criticise, but how to construct. But the poet is born, not made. Art may help him to realize his possibilities, but it cannot inspire them. It may aid the rest of us to recognize and delight in poetry, but it will not supply us with poetical conceptions. Hear what he (Macaulay) says in the introduction to his Essay on Dryden : "The man who is best able to take a machine to pieces, and who most clearly comprehends the manner of its work¬ing, will be the man most competent to form another machine of 588 WHAT CONSTITUTES POETRY, VI. similar power. In all the branches of physical and moral science which admit of perfect analysis, he who can resolve will be able to combine. But the analysis which criticism can effect of poetry is necessarily imperfect. One element must forever elude its re-searches ; and that is the very element by which poetry is poetry." It is the old story. The botanist can take the flowers to pieces, show you the stamens, pistil, calyx, corolla, and all the rest of it, but can he put them together again ? Can he grasp or recreate the mysterious thing which held them together and made the living flower? No; the life has escaped his grasp. Now this quick life, this vivid impulse, this unnamable essence which makes poetry to be poetry—these learning, criticism, study, reflection, may kill as I have said, but cannot create.—SHAIRP. A modern poet, whose own experience and productions exemplified his words, said "A man cannot Bay, I will write poetry ; the greatest poet cannot say it for the mind in creation in as a fading coal, which some irresistible influence, like an inconstant wind, awakens to transitory brightness. This power arise' from within, like the color of a flower which dims and changes as it Is developed, and the conscious portions of our nature are Improphetio either of its approach or of its departure. It is, as it were, the interpenetration of a diviner nature within our own ; but its footsteps are like those of • wind over the sea, which the coming calm erases, and whose traoos remain only on the wrinkled sand which paves it. Poetry is the record of the best and happiest moments of the happiest and best minds." . . . For what is it that is the primal source, the earliest impulse, out of which all true poetry In the past has sprung, out of which alone it can ever spring? Is it not the descent upon the soul, or the flashing up from its in¬most depths, of some thought, sentiment, emotion, which possesses, flUe, kindles it—es we say, inspire; Iti It may be some new truth, which the poet has been the first to dis¬cern. It may be some world-old truth, borne in upon him so vividly that be seems to have been the first (man) who has ever seen it. New to him, a new dawn, as it were, from within, the light of it makes all it touches new. -SHAIRP. In the description of the Transfiguration. In St. Matthew, we are told that "Peter, James, and John his brother, were brought op into a high mountain apart," and that " a bright cloud overshadowed them." Applying with becoming reverence that sacred scene, I would say that poetry is a transfiguration, which takes place only at a certain elevation, and during which those who perceive it are overshadowed by a cloud, bat a cloud that is bright, . . . Poetry is a transfiguration of life ; in other words, an imaginative representation, in verse or rhythm, of whatever men perceive, feel, think, or do.—ALTR1D Arnim. The Importance of true criticism can be estimated only by those who recognize its rarity. Destructive criti¬cism—mere flaw-picking, usually based on ignorance or lack of sympathetic imagination—is unfortunately com¬mon; for it presents to the conceited a temptation almost Caar. XXXI. CRITICISM. 689 irresistible to vaunt their superior discrimination. But constructive criticism—the recognition of beauties that the usual eye has failed to see—is the chief element of a broad culture. Speaking of a certain essay on Shakspere by a Mrs. Montague, Dr. Johnson once said, "No, sir, there is no real criticism in it ; none showing the beauty of the thought, as founded in the work¬ings of the human heart." That word of the stern old critic well expresses what is the trite function of his own craft, the only thing that makes poetic criticism worth having—when some competent person uses it to explain to the world in general, who really do not see far in such matters, those permanent truths of human feel¬ing on which some great poem is built. For, after all, the repu¬tation which attaches even to the greatest—Homer, Shakspere, and the like—depends on the verdict of a few. They see into the core of the matter, tell the world what it ought to see and feel ; and the world receives their saying and repeats it.--SHAIRP. A newspaper account of poetic remodelling by a legal reporter is hardly a caricature. "Would you be kind enough to direct me to the editor?" asked a grave and venerable gentleman with a kindly face and pleasant smile. "He's out," responded the law reporter. "Is there anything I can do ? " "I am Dr. Holmes," responded the gentleman. "Where's your office, Doctor? Come to see about the diph-theria? I can do as well as the editor. What is it ? " and the law reporter braced himself. "Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes," replied the gentleman, his handsome face beaming with good nature. "I have a little poem I should like to submit. Shall I leave it with you ?" The law reporter took it and read it aloud. " You call it A Winter Day on the Prairie,' " said be, " ; yes." blinding glare, a silver sky, A sea of snow, with frozen spray ; The foaming billows swelling high, Updashed against the lay day. 690 WHAT CONSTITUTES POETRY. VL • 'White laden northern whirlwinds blow Across the pale sea's heavy breast, And fill the creamy ebb and flow With stormy terror and unrest. The storm birds fly athwart the main Like rudderless, bewildered ships, The stranded winds breathe sobs of pain And frosty froth from pallid lip., The seething milky waves, in swift, Harsh struggles with the fate that binds Break into frozen rift and drift Against the wrecked and staining winds. A sea of loneliness and death Whose waves are ghosts; whose vales are graves, Whose inspiration is the breath That lurks in northern Winter caves. A snowy gloom, whose icy shade Lies white beneath the spray tipped meet, Whose silver sombreuess is laid A glaring pall across his breast. "Just so, just so," continued the law reporter. "Did you want this published as it is ?" "1 had thought something of giving it publicity," replied the doctor. "You'll have to get the advertising clerk to register it, then," retorted the law reporter. "I wouldn't take the responsibility of sending it in as it stands now." "What seems to be the matter with it?" inquired the doctor. "I, don't think it is natural. Now, here, you take a snow-storm on the prairie and make it a sea. Then you freeze it all up and make it dash around. You've either got to thaw it out or quit dashing it. We may be able to alter it so it will do if you'll leave it." "What alterations would you suggest ?" asked the doctor. "I'd fix that first verse so as to be in accordance with the facts; make it sequential,' as we say in law. Instead of having the blinding, and the silver, and the foaming billows, and the white laden 'winds, and the creamy ebb, and all that rot, I'd put it this way : In township thirty, range twenty-nine, Described in the deed as prairie land, It roinetimets snows in the Winter time, As we are given to underistand. CHAP. XXXI CRITICISM. 591 This alleged =ow falls on a level, It's said, some several feet or mace, And when the wind blows very hard It drifts from where it was before. "In that way," continued the law reporter, "you get the facts be¬fore the public without committing the paper to anything. Under your poem any man who could prove you were talking about his land could bring a libel suit, and the measure of damages would be what he could have sold it for if you hadn't written it up as a sea." "Will the other verses do ?" asked the doctor. "Fm afraid not," replied the law reporter. "This business about the storm bird without a rudder, and stranded winds and milky waves don't prove anything. They wouldn't be admitted in evidence anywhere. I suppose you want to express desolation, but the testimony isn't good. Why don't you say : In the place aforesaid, when the winds blow, The tenants thereof don't go ab ut. And such birds as find they can stand the mow, Look as though they'd had their tails pnUed out. And when the said snow and wind had gone, It's found the said land finds a r.ady taker, For though you can't farm much when winter's on, The property don't fall a cent an sore. "There you get your desolation, and your birds, like rudder-less ships, and at the same time you throw in a clause which lets you out of the libel by showing that the snow don't affect the value of the ground. The way you had it you would have brought all the Western settlements down on us. Been a poet long?" " I—I—that is, I begin to think not," gasped the unhappy doctor. "But can't you do something with the last verse ? " "We might leave that out altogether, or we might substitute something for it. The last verse is a contradiction of terms. It's a non-sequitur, as we may say in law, and could have no status in court in the event of an action. You can't say snowy gloom, or white shade ; and as for a glaring pall, I presume you mean the white velvet one they use for infants. I couldn't pass that in, but I might change it for you. How would this do : 592 WHAT CONSTITUTES POETRY. VL It is rumored that while the snow Is on the land before described, It looks as though one couldn't sow Seed to advantage, though this is denied. Some people hold that it emptier the pouch To buy land in the Winter in the North; For this unsupported statement we do not vouch, But give the story for what it is worth. "This, you see, gives all sides of the question, without making the paper responsible for anything. I call that a superior article of poetry," continued the law reporter, reading the three stanzas over in an admiring tone of voice. "But there isn't any poetry in it," stammered the doctor. "What's the reason there isn't ?" demanded the law reporter, indignantly. "Don't it tell everything you did, and don't it rhyme in some places ? Don't it get out all the facts, and don't it let people know what is going on ? " "Of course it does," chimed in the police reporter. "That's what I call a good item of poetry. I think you might add start¬ling developments may be expected, and the police have got a clue to the perpetrator." "That isn't necessary," replied the law reporter, loftily. "We poets always leave something to the reades imagination." "I believe I'll go," murmured the doctor. "All right, sir. Come around any time when you've got some poetry you want fixed up," and the law reporter bowed the visitor out. Definitions of poetry abound. One of the best is the motto at the head of this chapter. Others are as fol-lows: The most just and comprehensive definition which, I think, can be given of poetry is, "That it is the language of passion, or of enlivened imagination, formed most commonly into regular num¬bers."—BLAra. Poetry is the impassioned expression which is in the counte-nance of all science. —WoRDswoirrii. • All poetry worthy of the name is "more intense in meaning and more concise in style" than prose. It is thought touched with imagination and emotion.—SnAlae. CRAP. BICSI. THE IDEAL. 593 As distinguished from oratory, poetry differs in its main purpose, which is not persuasion, but contempla¬tion. Poetry, as poetry, has nothing to do with conduct and action. Contemplation is its aim and end. . . . What is the distinction between the highest eloquence and true poetry is an interesting question, but not one to detain us now. Perhaps, in passing, we may say that in eloquence, whatever imag¬ination is allowed to enter is kept consciously and carefully subor¬dinate to an ulterior object, either to convince the hearers of some truth, or to persuade them to some course of action, On the other hand, when in prose composition the whole or any part of it is felt to be poetical, the thoughts which are poetical appear to be dwelt upon for the pure imaginative delight they yield, for their inhe¬rent truth, or beauty, or interest, without reference to anything beyond. If the writer is more intent on the effect he wishes to produce than on the imaginative delight of the thought he utters, it then ceases to be true poetry.—SHAIRP. The Ideal is the constant aim in poetry, as the practi¬cal is the constant aim in oratory. If it be true that We live by admiration, love, and hope,— that the objects which we admire, love, hope for, determine our character, make us what we are,—then it is the poet, more than any other, who holds the key of our inmost being. For it is he who, by virtue of inspired insight, places before us in the truest, most attractive light, the highest things we can admire, hope for, love. And this he does mainly by unveiling some new truth to men, or, which is the same thing, by so quickening and vivifying old and neglected truths, that he makes them live anew. To do this last needs as much prophetic insight as to see new truths for the first time. . . . This is the poet's highest office—either to be a revealer of new truth, or an unveiler of truths forgotten or hidden from common eyes. There is another function which poets fulfil—that of setting forth in appropriate form the beauty which all see, and giving to 594 WHAT CONSTITUTES POETRY. VL thoughts and sentiments in which all share beautiful and attractive expression. This last is the poet's artistic function, and that which some would assign to him as his only one. These two aspects of the poet, the prophetic and the artistic, coexist in different proportions in all great poets ; in one the prophetic insight predominates, in another the artistic utterance. In the case of any single poet it may be an interesting question to determine in what proportions he possesses each of these two quali¬ties. --SHAtRP. The Prophetic in poetry (to adopt Professor Shairp's distinction) i sometimes thought to be unreal, because it is imaginative ; but it has been well pointed out that it rests on the deepest truth—on the truth that underlies incidents of experience and is fundamental in human na-ture. (Compare page 235.) Aristotle says : "Poetry is more philosophical and worthy of attention than history, for poetry speaks of universals, but W.story of particulars." Of the same opinion was Sir Philip Sidney, who declares that it is a commendation peculiar to poetry, and not to history, to exalt virtue and to punish vice, to set the mind forward to that which deserves to be called good. "As if your journey should lie through a fair vineyard, at the very outset the poet doth give you a cluster of grapes, that, full of that taste, you may long to pass farther." Lord Bacon gave to the world, ten years later, an amplification of Sidney's idea in the words following : "There is agreeable to the spirit of man a more ample greatness, a more exact- goodness, and a more absolute variety than can be found in the nature of things. Therefore, because the acts or events of true history have not that magnitude which satisfieth the heart of man, poesy feigneth acts and events greater and more heroical ; because true history propoundeth the successes and issues of actions not so agreeable to the merits of virtue and vice, therefore poesy feigns them more just in retribution, and more according to revealed providence ; because true history rep¬resenteth actions and events more ordinary, and less interchanged, therefore poesy endueth them with more rareness, and more unex CHAP. XXXI.) THE ARTISTIC. 595 pected and alternative 'variations; so as it appeareth that poesy serveth and conferreth to magnanimity, morality, and delectation. And therefore it was ever thought to have some participation of divineness, because it doth raise and erect the mind by submitting the shews of things to the desires of the mind ; whereas reason doth buckle and bow the mind to the nature of things."—HsavEr. The view which he (Aristotle) took was concentrated in the saying, that poetry is more philosophical than history, because it looks more to general and less to particular facts. We should now express the same thing in the statement that, whereas history is fact, poetry is truth —Dames. It is the prerogative of poetry to convey to us, as nothing else can, the beauty that is in all nature, to interpret the finer quality that is hidden in the hearts of men, and to hint at a beauty which lies behind these, a light "above the light of setting suns," which is incommunicable. In doing this it will fulfil now, as of old, the office which Bacon assigned to it, and will give some "shadow of satisfaction to the spirit of man longing for a more ample great¬ness, a more perfect goodness, and a more absolute variety," than here it is capable of.—Snanw. The Artistic in poetry has been well described by John Stuart Mill. He asked himself whether, if all the social ends he had hitherto aimed at were achieved, their success would really give him in¬ward satisfaction; and he honestly answered, No He then fell into a prolonged despondency, from which for a time nothing could rouse him. Almost the first thing which came to relieve this mental malady was the study of Wordsworth's poems, especially the Lyrical Ballads. In these he seemed to find the medicine he needed. Expressing as they did "states of feeling and of thought colored by feeling under the excitement of beauty, they seemed to open to him a perennial source "of inward joy, and of sympathetic and imaginative pleasure, which could be shared by all human beings." This art of Wordsworth's is further explained by Pro¬fessor Shairp : • First, he did not attempt to describe rural objects as they are in 596 WHAT CONSTITUTES POETRY. [Pear VL themselves, but rather as they effect human hearts. [Compare pages 108, 245. As it has been well expressed, he stood at the meeting-place where inflowing nature and the soul of man touch each other, showed how they fit in each to each, and what exqui-site joy comes from the contact. Secondly, he did not hold with Coleridge, that from nature we "receive but what we give," but rather that we receive much which we do not give. He held that nature is a "living presence," which exerts on us active powers of her own,—a bodily image through which the Sovereign Mind holds intercourse with men. The same critic speaks in'another place of the poetical element in Tacitus : But there is in him something more, something peculiarly his own, which is of the true essence of poetry—his few condensed clauses hinting all the sadness and hopelessness of his time, or the vivid scenes he paints so full of human pathos. . . . What man is, what he does, what he should do, what he may become, what he may enjoy, admire, venerate, love, what he may hope, what is his ultimate destiny,—these things are never absent from the thoughts of great poets, and that not by accident, but from their very essence as poets. Questions arise (1) as to whether all subjects are suitable for poetic representation, or only those that tend to elevate the mind ; and (2) as to the extent to which the purely subjective element is essential in poetry. (1) AT THE PRESENT DAY, there is vigorous discussion whether or not the low, the vile, the morbid features of depraved life are subjects of artistic description. We Arnold and the writer appear to go apart in this, that, whereas he affirms that poetry is a criticism of life, and the greatness of a poet depends upon how he has criticised it, I ven¬ture to affirm that poetry is a representation of life, and that the greatness of a poet depends upon how much he has represented ; the poetic manner being, in either case, presupposed.—Arznico Awns. CHAP. XXXI.] THE SUBJECTS OF POETRY. 597 You have in Burns's song what, in the language of logicians, I would call the "first intention" of thought and feeling. You overhear in it the first throb of the heart, not meditated over, not subtilized and refined, but projected warm from the first glow. . . . But what seems to me most characteristic in the poetry of the time is elaborately ornate diction and luscious music, expended on themes not weighty in themselves. . . . Wordsworth is reported to have said in conversation, that as a poet Scott cannot live, for he has never written anything addressed to the immortal part of man. . . . All contemporary poetry, indeed all contemporary literature, goes to work in exactly the opposite direction, shaping men and things after patterns self- originated (from within), describing and probing human feelings and motives with an analysis so searching, that all manly impulse withers before it, and single-hearted straight-forwardness becomes a thing impossible. Against this whole tendency of modern poetry and fiction, so weakening, so morbidly self-conscious, so unhealthily introspective, what more effective antidote than the bracing atmosphere of Homer, and Shakspere and Scott ?—BHAIRP. Do the Faculty of Columbia College exercise any wholesome control over their stu¬dents? Wise and severe restriction would seem to be needful In many ways. We NM, for instance, in the last number of that smart and lively semi-monthly magazine, called Ada Columbiana, such stuff as the following no-called poem : Heavy with fragrant odors is the air, And ever an a soft breeze gently blows, It breathes the perfume of some blushing roes That it has kissed—some rich carnation rare, Upon whose bosom, crimson-flushed and bare, Has lain Its head in odorous repose— And lightly fans my forehead ere it goes To die forgotten, silently, somewhere. Somewhere ? Alt, love, sines I have fondly preened Thy scarlet lips to mine, and learned how sweet Thy khan are—how fragrant is thy breath— This secret somewhere, how easily Ile gunned 0 geutle breeze I if I were sure to meet Thy happy fate, Pd gladly welcome death. Now, this style of thought and language is not suitable for any young man who is re¬ceiving his education in Columbia College. That institution should carefully look after the literary taste as well as the morality of 1e student.; and hers is one whose ideas are 598 WHAT CONSTITUTES POETRY. VI. but ezsggerated commonplace, whose inspiration is trivial and mushy, and whose literary culture is both shallow and pretentious. The faculty ought to sit down heavily on such a student.. —N. F. Bun. (2) The Subjective element, important as it is in poetry, must be used artistically, not morbidly. Byron, and such poets as he, when they express emotion, are wholly absorbed in it, lose themselves entirely in the feeling of the moment. For the time, it is the whole world to them. Wordsworth, and such as he, however deeply they sympathize with any suffering, never wholly lose themselves in it, never forget that the quick and throbbing emotions are but "moments in the being of the eternal silence." They make you feel that you are, after all, encompassed by an everlasting calm. The passionate kind of lyric is sure to be the most universally popular. The meditative lyric appeals to a profounder reflectiveness, which is feelingly alive to the full pathos of ife, and to all the mystery of 1301TONV.—SHAIBP. Shall I sonnet sing you about myself Do I lire in a house you would like to see ? 1.11 it aunt of gear, has it store of pelt? Unlock my heart with a sonnet key?' Invite the world, as my betters have done? 'Take notice, this balding remains on view. Its suites of remotion every one, Its private armaments and bedroom too ; For a ticket, apply to the Publisher.' No; thanking the public. I infest decline. A peep through the aindow, if folks prefer ; But, please you, no foot over threshold of mine. ROSS= Bsownro. The Language of poetry is instinctively different from that of prose (see 484, 572). Our poetical style differs widely from prose, not in point of numbers only, but in the very words themselves; which shows what a stock and compass of words we have it in our power to select and employ, suited to those different occasions. Herein we are infinitely superior to the French, whose poetical language, if it were not distinguished by rhyme, would not be known to differ from their ordinary prose.—BLAnt. CHAP. =EL] DIVISIONS OF POETRY. 599 Divisions of Poetry.—The following divisions of poetry are made by Professor Shairp. Lyme!, Barna is poetry in its intensest and purest form. A BA.LLAD is a poem which narrates an event in a simple style, noticing the several incidents of it successively, as they occurred ; not indulging in sentiment or reflection, but conveying whatever sentiment it has indirectly, by the way the facts are told, rather than by direct expression. A Box°, on the other hand, contains little or no narrative, tells no facts, or gives, by allusion only, the thinnest possible frame-work of fact, with a view to convey some one prevailing sentiment— one sentiment, one emotion, simple, passionate, unalloyed with in¬tellectualizing or analysis. That it should be of feeling all com¬pact; that the words should be translucent with the light of the one all-pervading emotion, this is the essence of the true song. PasTonaL POETRY expresses the lives, thoughts, feelings, man¬ners, incidents, of men and women who were shepherds, peasants, crofters, and small moorland farmers, in the very language and phrases which they used at their firesides. The subject of the EPIC) Pont must be some one, great, com-plex action. The principal personages must belong to the high places of the world, and must be grand and elevated in their ideas and in their bearing. The measure must be of a sonorous dignity, befitting the subject. The action is carried on by a mixture of narrative, dialogue, and soliloquy. Briefly to express its main characteristics, the epic treats of one great, complex action, in grand style, and with fulness of detail.—THomes ARNOLD. Other divisions, such as Descriptive, Reflective, Dra¬• matic, etc., will readily suggest themselves. TOPICAL ANALYSIS. What Constitutes Poetry. Construction vs. Criticism, p. 587. Importance of true criticism, p. 588. Definitions of poetry, p. 592. Poetry distinguished from oratory, p. 598. The ideal in poetry, p. 598. The prophetic in poetry, p. 594. The artistic in poetry, p. 595. Quo-shim : 1. Whether all subjects are suitable for poetic representa¬tion, p. 598. 2. To what extent the subjective element is essential, p. 598. The language of poetry, p. 598. Divisions of poetry, p. 599. CHAPTER XXXII. FIGURATIVE LANGUAGE. THE language of poetry is particularly characterized by the use of Figures. While these are not absent from orations, from essays, even from the commonest speech of daily life, they are essential to poetry, and may be there employed with a profusion that would weaken other forms of composition. The term Fromm, called by the Greeks schema, and the Romans figura, is thought by some to have been borrowed from the stage. The word schema and its derivatives were employed by Greek writers to designate the gestures and attitudes of the actors and the characters assumed by them. It is not uncommon in our own language to say of a person's dress or actions, "He makes an awkward figure," "He makes a handsome figure," "His conduct is out of character." It was therefore natural and suggestive to call any striking form of speech or turn of thought a figure. Now this idea may assist us in making such a definition of the term figure as will include the notion which the Greeks and Romans expressed by the term. In spite of their own definitions, their practice shows that they understood by it any noticeable form or turn of language without regard to the question whether the word or words were changed from their proper, natural, or principal sense. They re¬garded the striking peculiarities of diction as characters into which words of whatever significance had been transformed. Wherefore they are termed by Cicero "attitudes of style." The Greek and Roman rhetors made a distinction between the trope and the figure. Modern writers on this subject have re 602 FIGURATIVE LANGUAGE. VI. speoted this distinction, and yet have employed the latter term in so wide a sense as to embrace the idea of a trope. A trope is, ac¬cording to Quintilian, the change of a word or phrase from its proper, natural, or principal meaning into another, in order to in¬crease its force or to adorn style. This definition is faulty in sev¬eral particulars. It ignores the fact that the most natural signifi¬cation of a word may be tropical, and the word that is supposed to be turned from its primitive sense is perhaps turned in reality from a derivative one. The literal or original meaning of a word is not always its proper and principal import. Nor is it philosophical to say that one word can be changed from its own signification to that of another; for many words have several well-known senses. A word may indeed take the place of another, but it stands there for itself, and in one of its own significations. The moderns confine tropes to single words, while they consider figures as belonging to words or phrases or sentences. The most philosophical and serviceable classification of figures is that whidt is made by Dr. Alexander Carson: a. Figures founded on resemblance, as metaphor, comparison, and allegory. b. Figures founded on relation, as metonymy, metalepeis, synecdoche, antonomasia, onomatopoeia, periphrasis, emphasis, insinuation, equivocation. c. Figures in which there is an apparent Inconsistency between their literal and their figurative meaning. To this class belong irony, sarcasm, epitrope, oxymoron, " con, or the Irish trope," apophasis, syncecelosis, allusion, paradox, litotes, mild* Juno¬tura," hyperbole, interrogation. "designation by opposite extremes." d. The elliptical figures. To this clam belong ellipsis, apostopests, interruption, asyn¬deton. e. The pleonastic figures. To this class belong pleonasm, polyayndeton, repetition, parenthesis. epanorthosis. f. Figures of arrangement, as hyperbation, antithesis, and climax.. g. Personification, apostrophe, exclamation, interjection. A. Grammatical figures. Change of cases, of tenses, of persons, of names, of numbers. 1. Figures of a complex nature, as catachresis, euphemism, vhdon.--Hzaviti. The Chief Figures are (a) Personification ; (b) Me-tonymy; (c) Synecdoche ; (d) Hyperbole ; (e) Irony ; ( f ) Simile ; (g) Metaphor. (a) Personification endows the lower animals and in-animate objects with the attributes of human beings. Thus : "lam glad," answered the bee, "to hear you grant, at least, that I came honestly by my wings and my voice." °RAP. XXXII. APOSTROPHE. 603 The mountains and the hills shall break forth before you into singing, and all the trees of the field shall clap their hands. Perhaps the vale Relents awhile to the reflected ray.—Tnosmon. It is clear that nature, who is undoubtedly the most graceful artist, bath in all her ornamental works pursued variety, with an apparent neglect of regularity.—BLan. EXERCISE.—Grive sentences in which the following words are personified : Time Spring Sun Hope Sleep Winter Moon Mercy Death Ship Sea Wisdom Apostrophe is personification of the second person, and addresses the inanimate as persons, or the absent as present ; as "0 Death, where is thy sting ?" &sins of Me mighty I can it be, That this is all remains of thee Apostrophe (Gr. dirO, arpisbco) means literally a turning off or aside, and the figure is so called because the writer interrupts the natural course of his narration or description, to address the ob-ject to which it refers. Exclamation is allied to Apostrophe. The figure of exclamation deserves a caution rather than a com-mendation. It is excessively used in the pulpit. Not only in the monosyllabic forms " oh I " and " ah " but in the constructive forms, in which the whole sentence is made exclamatory, "How great!" "How important ! " "How solemn!" "Awful moment ! " "Fearful tidings!" There is a style, which, for the freedom with which it employs such constructions, may be fitly termed the ex-clamatory style. It is very easy composition ; it is a facile way of beginning a sentence ; therefore we employ it excessively. It is a sign of indolent composing. Our enquiry, therefore, should be, When may we omit it? and our rule, to dispense with it whenever we can. Dean Swift oommends a reader who said it was his rule to pass over every paragraph in reading, at the end of which his 604 FIGURATIVE LANGUAGE. VL eye detected the note of exclamation. Horne Tooke denied that exclamations belong to language ; he said they were involuntary nervous affections, like sneezing, coughing, yawning. —MIMI'S. (b) Metonymy interchanges correlative terms, as when we transpose, (1) The concrete and the abstract; as, the crown, for royalty ; the sword, for military power ; Cesar, for the sovereign power ; the fatal cup, for poison, etc., etc. Her Majesty, for the Queen; His Impu-dence, for an impudent fellow; etc., etc. (2) The effect and the cause; as, drunkenness, for wine; sunshine, for the sun ; gray hairs, for old age. (3) 7'he author and his works ; as, "I am reading Shakspere ;" He is an admirer of Wordsworth. Metonymy literally signifies (Gr. laird, 8vop.a) a change of name. (c) Synecdoche puts a part for the whole ; as fifty sail for fifty ships. "Consider the lilies how they grow," where lilies is put for all flowers, or for the whole vegeta-ble world. The part in the latter case is the species, and the whole is the genus. Synecdoche literally signifies (Gr. crvv, le, dixotusg) the under-standing or receiving of one thing out of another. The force of this figure consists in the greater vividness with which the part or the species is realized. (d) Hyberbole makes a statement more impressive by representing things to be greater or less, better or worse, than they really are. It frequently puts the whole for a part, and may then be regarded as the reverse of synec-doche ; as, The whole city came forth to meet him. It may also appear in the verb ; as, The French fleet was annihilated, meaning that it was disabled. Hyperbole (Gr. Lirip, l3AX0) literally signifies a throwing be-yond, an over-shooting. CHAP. XXXII IRONY. 605 The waves rose mountain-high. She shed a flood of tears. All Arabia breathes from yonder box. (e) Irony is the figure of real contradiction. Epigram means something different from what is expressed, Irony expresses the opposite of what is meant. It bestows praise in such a manner as to convey disapprobation. It professes belief in a statement for the purpose of casting ridicule upon it. Elijah's address to the priests of Baal is a memorable example of Irony : "Cry aloud ; for he is a god ; either he is talking, or he is pursuing, or he is on a journey, or peradventure he sleepeth and must be awaked." Job, also, mocked his Mends when he said, "No doubt but ye are the people, and wisdom will die with you." Johnson's letter to the Earl of Chesterfield affords several examples of Irony—e.g., "To be so distinguished is an honour, which, being very little accustomed to favours from the great, I know not well how to receive, or in what terms to acknowledge." Irony (Gr. elpow, a dissembler), literally signifies dissimulation. It pretends to approve, in order to expose and ridicule. Epigram is the figure of apparent contradiction (see Page 467)- The primary signification of epigram (Gr. hn, ypd•rins) was an in-scription upon a statue; the sense in which epigraph is now used. It was then applied to a short poem (a couplet or stanza) contain¬ing a pithy or witty saying, generally at its close. Lastly, the name was applied to the witty saying itself, and hence to any say¬ing characterized by wit and point. But the principal figures (or Tropes, to use a common term) are Simile and Metaphor. (f) Simile compares two things together, in order to show that they have qualities in common. To be effective the point of likeness should be (1) unexpected, and (2) ap¬plicable to the thought conveyed. 606 FIGURATIVE LANGUAGE. Meat VI. EXERCISE.—Complete the following similes. Example.—Fortune is fickle as the wind. Fortune is fickle—. Man's life fleeth—. The enemy fought—. The world is likened by Shakspere—. The cultivation of the mind—. An evil conscience is like—. The seasons of the year, as well as the divisions of the day, appropriately represent—. Charity — brightens every object on which it shines. (I) Trite similes arouse no interest. What gives the principal delight to the imagination is the exhi¬bition of a strong likeness which escapes the notice of the gener¬ality of people.—Caumnrs.L. Among similes, faulty through too great obviousness of the likeness, we must likewise rank those which are taken from ob-jects become trite and familiar in poetic language. Such are the similes of a hero to a lion, of a person in sorrow to a flower droop¬ing its head, of violent passion to a tempest, of chastity to snow, of virtue to the sun or stars, and many others of this kind.—Thant. Belittling Similes are still more to be avoided than those merely obvious. Thus: In one picture we see two lovers looking upon the sky ; poetical Augustus says, "Look, Edith how lovely are those fleecy cloud- lets, dappled over the—" Edith (not in a spirit of burlesque) re¬plies, "Yes, 'xactly like gravy when it's getting cold—isn't it?" The belittling may however be intentional, the effect aimed at resembling that of anti-climax (see page cxxxvi). You may conceive the difference in kind between the fancy and imagination in this way ;—that if the check of the senses and the reason were withdrawn, the first would become delirium, and the last mania. The fancy brings together images which have no con¬nection natural or moral, but are yoked together by the poet by means of some accidental coincidence, as in the well-known pas¬sage in Hudibras : The sun had long since in the lap Of Thetis taken out his nap, And, like a lobster boiled, the morn From black to red began to tarn. —00LKSID011. Oner. XXXII. j ADAPTABILITY. 607 (2) Adaptability is the principal test of the usefulness of a simile. Besides the recognition of it as just, there should be the further impression that it is pat to the occa¬sion; that it brings out the thought as no other expres¬sion could. Figures are not the utterances of blind impulse ; they are rather in many cases the result of the mind's endeavors to illustrate the truth, and to prove from an appeal to the visible world that its ex¬istence is both possible and probable. "Every metaphor," ac-cording to Cicero, "expresses the thing spoken of to the senses, especially to the eyes ; "and Seneca says that "by reason of human infirmity the teacher may by the help of figures bring into the very presence of his hearers those ideas which they could not otherwise understand."—Hzuvxr. Thus the following simile shows too much effort on the part of the author, and requires too much of the reader : It is not always easy to distinguish between beauty of thought and beauty of style ; and it will often be found that when this quality is attributed to a phrase, sentence, or paragraph, it is traceable to the thought or conception, or mental image, just as readily as a wing lying against the casement may be traced to the carrier-pigeon that rests panting and weary on the window-ledge below. —Hzsvicr. _Metaphor Inconfriztent. New stare have appeared and vanished ; the ancient asterisms remain ; there's not an old star znissing.—Hrositrr. If they had been, they would not have been old. This, there-fore, like many of Lord Bacon's illustrations, has more -wit than meaning. But it is a good trick of rhetoric. The vividness of the image per se makes men overlook the imperfection of the simile. "You see my hand, the band of a poor puny fellow-mortal ; and will you pretend not to see the hand of Providence in this business ? He who sees a mouse must be wilfully blind if he does not see an elephant."—Countroox. The Marquis of Lorne was welcomed to Montreal by the mayor, aldermen, and citizens. He delivered to them a formal, written 608 FIGURATIVE LANGUAGE. VL response. Singularly enough, instead of telling them something new and instructive, or at least entertaining, he undertook to in-form them on a subject with which they might naturally be ex-pected to be more familiar than he. He assumed to tell them how Montreal sits ! And how did he say she sits ? He said : Your beautiful city site like a queen.' Now the only queen that the Marquis of Lorne knows anything particular about is Queen Victoria, his mother-in-law. But suppose he had said, "Your beautiful city sits like my mother-in-law," how flat and ridiculous his simile would have sounded ! And yet we see that must be what he meant. Then, again, the comparison was not apt. He was anything but happy in his illustration. The Queen of England, the mother of numerous offspring, and the grandmother of a still more numerous progeny, has always been represented as very active—a busy body who seldom sits in one place any considerable length of time. Montreal is immovable, and always sits in the same place. She doesn't sit at all like Queen Victoria, who sits in a chair, and once in a while on the throne ; but only a few minutes at a time. It would have been more appropriate to say : "Your beautiful city sits like a hen," because a hen sits three weeks on the same nest ; or, still more correct, to say : "Your beautiful city site like a goose," because a goose sits four weeks in the same place. Al-most any comparison would have been preferable to the one he employed. We doubt whether the marquis's mother-in-law will be pleased when she receives her copy of the Sun containing this reference to her by the husband of her daughter.—New York Sun. This patness will be best understood by examples. The following will, therefore, be a profitable EXERCISE.—Point out the similes in the following illus-trations, and endeavor to make the sentences equally for¬cible without them A prudent man is like a pin. His head prevents him from go-ing too far. CHAP. XXXII SIMILES. 609 Make your bed as a coffin, and your coffin will be as a bed.— JERROLD. The world is as a cocoa-nut. There is the vulgar outside fibre, to be made into door-mats and ropes ; the hard shell, good for beer cups ; and the white, delicate kernel, the real worth, food for the gods.—JEBROLD. Romance and poetry, ivy, lichens, and wall-flowers, need ruin to make them grow.—IIAWTHORNE. A narrow mind cannot be enlarged, nor can a capacious one be contracted. Are we angry with a phial for not being a flask? or do we wonder that the skin of an elephant sits uneasily on a squir¬rel ?—Leripou. A tinger-breadth at hand will mar A world of light in heaven afar. A mote eclipse yon glorious star, An eye-lid hide the aky.—xxins. Did you ever hear my definition of matrimony? It is that it resembles a pair of shears, so joined that they cannot be separated, often moving in opposite directions, yet always punishing any one who comes between them.--STDNET SMITH. He would as soon undertake to peddle jewelry at the door of a Friends' meeting-house.—REEVEY. According to the laws of sound didactics, the teacher is not only to let himself down to the capacity of the learner, but to re-member that the laws of the human mind demand that it should receive all instruction gradually, because, as Quintilian says, dis-ciples are like narrow-necked vessels, which reject a great quan-tity of the liquid that is suddenly poured upon them, but are filled with that which is poured into them by degrees.—HERvEy. A man's character is like a fence—you cannot strengthen it by whitewash.—Camden Post. A. young negro bootblack observed a neighbor poring wisely over a newspaper, whereupon he addressed him thus : "Julius, what are you looking at that paper for? You can't read." "Go .away," cried the other indignantly ; "guess I can read ; I'se big enuff for that." "Big enuff " retorted the other, scornfully, " dat ain't nuffin. A cow's big enuff to catch mice ; but she can't." 'Frenchmen are like grains of gunpowder—each by itself. 610 FIGURATIVE LANGUAGE. VL smutty and contemptible, but mass them together and they are terrible indeed.--CoLzp.moz. "Look at Northcote," said Fugal; "he looks like a rat that has seen a cat." Daniel Webster struck me as much like a steam-engine in trousers. —SYDNEY %Errs. Why, look there at Jeffrey ; and there is my little friend —, who has not body enough to cover his mind decently with ; his in¬tellect is improperly exposed.—Id. Florists say that a bouquet of flowers is never perfect without one yellow blossom in honor of the sun. So the expedients of rhetorical figure are incomplete without the interrogative. The instinct of earnest speech craves it, and will always have it, if the speaker's taste has not been perverted by false notions of dignity. —Pnxixs. Unselfishness admits the full claims of all to love that is not preference. In discarding the opinion of a former time that, after all, every one had a right to be selfish, our age has made an ethi¬cal gain as great as the intellectual gain which Newton brought to his age by the discovery of gravitation. Our Lord God doth like a printer, who setteth the letters backwards; we see and feel well his setting, but we shall see the print yonder in the life to oome.—Loaker's Ttzble- 21dt A beautiful simile. Add that even in this world the lives, es-pecially the autobiographies, of eminent servants of Christ are like the looking-glass or mirror, which, reversing the types, renders them legible to us. —COLERIDGE. The memory grips and appropriates what it does not under-stand—appropriates it mechanically, like a magpie stealing a silver spoon, without knowing what it is, or what to do with it. The memory cannot help itself. It is a kleptomaniac and lets nothing go by.—DALLes. If you had listened to it in one of those brief sabbaths of the soul, when the activity and discursiveness of the thoughts are suspended, and the mind quietly eddies around in¬stead of flowing onward—(as at late evening in the spring I have mean a hot wheel in silent circles round and round a fruit-tree in full blossom, in the midst of which, as within a close tent of the purest white, an unseen nightingale was piping its sweetest notes)—in such a mood you might have half-fancied, half-felt, that her voice had • separate being of its own—that it was a living something, the mode of existence of which was for the ear only.—Oox.rautos. CRAP. riani METAPHOR. 611 Again, a person who is more properly to be regarded as an antiquarian than anything else will sometimes be regarded as high authority on some subject respecting which he has perhaps little or no real knowledge or capacity, if he have collected • multitude of facts relative to It Suppose, for instance, a man of much reading and of retentive mem¬ory, but of unphilosophical mind, to have amend a great collection of particulars re¬specting the writers on some silence, the times when they flourished, the numbers of their followers, etc., It is not unlikely he may lead both others and himself into the belief that he is a great authority on that science ; when perhaps he may really know—though a great dell about it—nothing of it. Such • man's mind, compared with that of one really versed in the subject, is like an antiquarian armory, full of curious old weapons, many of them the more precious from having been long superseded ; as compared with a well- stocked arsenal, containing all the mod approved warlike implements fit for actual rios.—Werame. CIL/TIOS.-81r Henry Wotton used to say, and Bacon deemed the saying valuable enough to be entered in his book of Apothegms, that they are but brushers of gentle¬men's clothes ; Ben Joneon spoke of them as tinkers, who make more faults than they mend ; Samuel Butler, as the fierce inquisitors of wit, and as butchers who have no right to sit on a jury ; Sir Richard Steele, as of all mortals the Wiliest; Swift, aa dogs, tate, wasps, or at best the drones of the learned world ; Shenstone, as deep, which by gnawing the vines first taught the advantage of punning them ; Burns, as cut-throat bandits in the path of fame ; Washington Irving, as freebooters in the republic of letters ; and BR Walter Scott, humorously reflecting the general sentiment, as caterpillars. . . . Critics have always had a stanng cannibal instinct. They have not only snapped at the poets; they have devoured one another. It seems as if, like Diana's priest at Aricia, a critic could not attain his high office except by slaughter of the pried already Installed; or as If he had been framed in the image of that serpent which the old legends tell us cannot become a dragon unless it swallows another serpent. . . . Hissing is the only sound in nature that can awaken no echo ; and if criticism is naught but hissing, can do naught but him, it is altogether a mistake.—Daars. The old Geronomite in the Escurial said to Wilkie, as he stood in the refectory gazing on Titian's picture of the Last Supper : "I have sat daily in sight of that picture for now nearly three-score years ; during that time my companions have dropped off, one after another. More than one generation has passed away, and there the figures in that pic¬ture remain unchanged. I look at them till I sometimes think that they are the realities, and we but the shadows—rd. (g) Metaphor is simile without the form of compari-son, one object being spoken of not as like another, but as another ; as, "Man, thou pendulum 'twixt a smile and tear." Metaphor is affirmed by some to consist in things, by others to consist in words. Aristotle comprehends synecdoche under the term metaphor. "A metaphor," says he, "is a transposition of a noun from its proper signification, either from the genus to the species or from the species to the genus, or from species to specif.M1 612 FIGURATIVE LANGUAGE. [PART VL or according to analogy." . . . These are illustrated by Aris¬totle thus : A transposition from species to species is such as The brazen falchion drew away his life ; and Out by the ruthless sword. For here, in the first case, to draw away is used instead of to cut ; and in the second, to cut is used instead of to draw away; since both imply taking something away. . . . I say, for in¬stance, a cup has a similar relation to Bacchus that a shield has to Mara. Hence a shield may be called the cup of Mars, and a cup the shield of Bacchus. One may therefore say that evening is the old age of day, and that old age is the evening of life. The metaphor and the simile often assist each other. The sim¬ile may first point out the resemblance, and then as the discourse quickens its pace the words denoting comparison are thrown aside as a cloak of cumbersome weight ; or, on the contrary, the too swift discourse may slacken its pace in order to state the simili¬tude which was before only implied, as if to gather the floating cloak more closely about the person, that the runner may be more easily recognized.—HERVEY. It is a remark of Aristotle that the simile is more suitable in poetry, and the* meta¬phor is the only ornament of language in which the orator may freely indulge. They may be employed either to elevate or to degrade the subject, according to the design of the author ; being drawn from similar objects of a higher or lower character. Thus a loud and vehement speaker may be described either as bellowing or as thundering. A happier example cannot be found than the one which Aristotle cites from Bimonides, who, when offered a small price for an ode to celebrate a victory in a mule race, expressed his con¬tempt for "half-sews," as they were commonly called ; but when a larger sum was offered addressed them in an ode as "Daughters of steeds swift as the storm." . . . We may say. e.g., with propriety that "Cromwell trampled on the laws ; " it would sound feeble to my that "he treated the laws with the same contempt as a man does any¬thing he tramples under his feet." On the other hand, it would be harsh and obscure to my, "The stranded vessel lay ahaken by the waves," meaning the wounded chief tossing on a bed of sickness: it is therefore necessary in such a case to Mate the resemblance. But this is never to be done more fully than is necessary to perspicuity: because all men are more gratified at catching the resemblance for themselves than at having it pointed out to them.—WHATELY. This figure [simile occurs oftenest in those kinds of poetry which meet nearly resemble oratory, namely, the passionate. Mr. Gladstone has well observed that in frequency, length, and picturesqueness of similes the peaceful Odyssey is far behind the stormy Iliad. Instead of one hundred and ninety.four it has only forty-one, and these, with few exceptions, are, an Mr. Coleridge thinks, imitated from the earlier poem—Hmtvir. CRAP. XXXII.] METAPHOR. 613 The following are examples of forcible metaphor: Such themes given to composition pupils as, "The praise of in¬dustry," "The importance of youth," etc.-, are ostrich eggs, upon which the poor pupils sit and brood with their too short wings and make nothing warm but themselves.—Jxxx Pam. The rude thought faculty which is not expanded into intelli-gence may be sharpened into cunning.—JoHN FOSTER. The ink of female logic is blotted all over with tears, and jus¬tice in their courts is forever in a passion.—THAcKzaAr. There's not a string attuned to mirth, • But has its chord in melancholy.—Hoou. Laughter and tears are meant to be the wheels of the same machinery of sensibility. One is wind-power, the other water-power. That's all the difference.—Hormus. The reason why so few marriages are happy is because young ladies spend their time in making nets, not in making cages. — SWIFT. The people's prayer, the glad diviner's theme, The young men's skins, and the old men's dream.—DaYDEN. For fear their orations should giggle they would not let them smile. —FULLER. A little boy ran away from home, and, while enjoying himself in forbidden fields, a thunder-storm came up, and it began to hail. His guilty conscience needed no accuser. Running home he burst into the presence of his astonished mamma, exclaiming breath¬lessly: "Ma, ma, God's frowing stones at me ! " But I will at least promise my readers that they shall neither find me so dictatorial in my statements, nor so bigoted to my own opinions as to hold myself above correction. If I offer them the rough quartz of my own digging, I shall rejoice if they extract the gold, even though they crush the ore to do so.—BLAcxxxr. As condensed similes, metaphors must escape triteness, of which they are in greater danger, because unconscious metaphor forms so prominent an element of common speeeli. The metaphor, by passing into common speech, degenerates into a literal term ; and the symbolic phrase comes at length to 614 FIGURATIVE LANGUAGE. Mem VL be debased into a trite and unimaginative idiom. The silver coin, by daily circulation and occasional clippings, loses at last the image and superscription of Caesar. The angular fragment which some mad storm-wave smites out of the ocean, rolls down among the shingle, and there, in all weathers, runs regularly up and down the beach, along with its more polished acquaintances, until it be¬comes as round and smooth as they. To the common observer its parentage is now a mystery ; but the curious summer stroller finds in its complexion and veins the unmistakable evidences of its ori¬gin. —HenvEr. Many English verbs are metaphors derived from the names or habits of animals. Thus we "crow over" a person, like a cock; we "quail," as that bird does, in the presence of danger ; we "caper," as a goat (caper) ; we " duck " our heads ; we " ferret " a thing out ; we " dog " a person's footsteps ; we "sneak," like a snake ; we "struts" like an ostrich (strouthos), and so on. In the following extract the words italicized are astrological terms now adapted and used without a thought of their original significance : I should consider any enterprise undertaken under Ms auspice. Uletarred and likely to end in disaster, and should augur most unfavorably for its mimes" if entrusted in an evil /tour to one of such sinister analog and abominable oharacter.—Btamumr. To these might be added : Jovial, mercurial, martial, saturnine, in the ascendant, culminate, lunatic, etc. Purrs sometimes enter into metaphor ; as, It was the prejudice of an exemplary schoolmaster to prefer one slip of olive to a whole grove of birch.—Jensonn. Even with this load upon it the metaphor may enter into ordinary speech. Thus the bank of the canal oppo¬site the tow-path was by somebody's pun upon " toe- path " spoken of as the "heel-path." The designation, being needed, was adopted, and is now used daily by boatmen, who never dream that its history embodies an idle gibe. CHAP. XXXII XETAP11011. 615 Completeness is essential to effective metaphor : as when a very tall, lank man is spoken of as seven feet steep. Wolsey's metaphor is complete when he says that this is the state of man • "To-day he puts forth the tender leaves of hope ; to-morrow blossoms, and bears his blushing honors thick upon him ; the third day comes a frost, a killing frost, and, when he thinks, good, easy man, full surely his greatness is a-ripening, nips his root, and then he falls, as I do." Some care is accordingly requisite in order that they may be readily comprehended and may not have the appearance of being far-fetched and extravagant. For this purpose it is usual to com¬bine with the metaphor a proper term which explains it, viz., either attributing to the term in its transferred sense something which does not belong to it in its literal sense, or, vice versa, denying it in its transferred sense something which does be¬long to it in its literal sense. To call the sea the "watery bul-wark" of our island would be an instance of the former kind ; an example of the latter is the expression of a writer who speaks of the dispersion of some hostile fleet by the winds and waves, "those ancient and unsubsidized allies of England." Aristotle has cited several examples from Homer, as "the rag-ing arrow," "the darts eager to taste of flesh," "the shameless (or as it might be rendered with more exactness though with less dig¬nity, the provoking) stone," Velar civatair, which mocks the efforts of Sisyphus. There is a peculiar aptness in some of these expres-sions which the modern student is likely to overlook ; an arrow or dart, from flying with a spinning motion, quivers violently when it is fixed, thus suggesting the idea of a person quivering with eagerness. -WHATELY. In general, metaphors should reveal new beauties as they are more closely studied. But they should not be pressed too far in interpretation—a frequent mistake, especially in biblical criticism. They are intended to point out likeness in a certain direction, and it should not be inferred that the likeness extends to all qualities and characteristics. 616 FIGURATIVE LANGUAGE. TART VI. It hardly need be added that care must be taken to avoid ambiguous allusions. Thus : When a lady living in Chelsea sent to London for a doctor, she apologized for asking him to come such a distance. "Don't speak of it," answered the M.D., "I happen to have another pa¬tient in the neighborhood, and can thus kill two birds with one stone." Mixed Metaphors, or a combination in one figure of two different comparisons, are an especial danger to careless writers. Thus : I do not want to handle, to profane the leaves their winding sheets. I could as soon dislodge a shade. I seem to inhale learn ing walking amid their foliage.—Lems. Here the leaves of the books in a library are first com-pared to the "winding sheets" of their authors, and are immediately afterward compared to the " foliage " of trees. Campbell points out that we may say with Dryden : All hands employed, the royal work grows warm; but that it is incongruous to say, "One of the hands fell overboard ; " "All our hands are asleep." So we may speak of descrying a sail, but not of sails ploughing the main. A fanciful metaphor may be pushed too far, as where a reporter says : Winter has not yet departed, but is sitting tenaciously in the lap of spring. Similes may be spoiled in the same way, as in the fol-lowing paragraph from the New York Herald of October 28, 1883: People build houses by putting all the carved freestone and Oner. XXXIL] MIXED METAPHORS. 617 costly embellishments on the front, and all the cheap brick at the back. Some characters are built in the same way precisely. Here the last word is intended to strengthen, but un-dermines the comparison. The following metaphor, pushed to absurdity, is from the New York Sun : It was the novel on the Land League, undertaken for a weekly paper, which was the last straw on the back of that exhausted lit-erary camel, Mr. Anthony Trollope. The following are instances of metaphor not complete enough to be obvious; A man's power is hooped in by a necessity which, by many experiments, he touches on every side, until he learns its arc. —Esaresos. Cbanning's mind was planted as thick with thoughts as a backwood of his own magnificent land.—Gnamarri. Then I saw that one came to Passion, and brought him • bag of treasure, and poured it down at his feet; the which he took up and rejoiced therein, and withal laughed Pa¬tience to scorn ; but I beheld but a while, and he had lavished all away, and had nothing left him but rags."—Buwvaw's Pilgrim's Program. One of the not many instances of faulty allegory in the "Pil-grim's Progress ; " that is, it is no allegory. The beholding "but a while," and the change into "nothing but rags," is not legiti-mately imaginable. A longer time and more interludes are re-quisite. It is a hybrid compost of usual images and generalized words, like the Nile-born nondescript, with a head or tail of organized flesh, and a lump of semi-mud for the body. Yet perhaps these very defects are practically excellencies in relation to the intended readers of the "Pilgrim's Progress." . . . "And the other took directly up the way to Destruction, which led him into a wide field, full of dark mountains, where he stumbled and fell, and rose no more."—BONYAN. This requires a comment. A wide field full of mountains, and of dark mountains, where Hypocrite stumbled and fell! The images here are unusually obsoure.--Oomunnos. 618 FIGURATIVE LANGUAGE. VI. The following are examples of mixed metaphors : Coleridge quotes a ludicrous instance in the poem of a young tradesman : No more will I endure love's pleasing pain, Or round my Mares leg tie his galling chain. "After lunch the benches were removed and Terpsichore spread her wings over the assemblage of ladies and gentlemen." Ob¬viously this reporter was so modest that he did not like to make the customary allusion to the muse's light, fantastic toe, and so made her dance with her wings. Virginia has an iron chain of mountains running through her centre, which God has placed there to milk the clouds and to be the source of her silver rivers.—Govuason Wisu. There, where thy Anger scorched the tablet-stone, There, where thy shadow to thy people shone.—ETION. I need the sympathy of human faces, To beat away this deep contempt for things, Which quenches my revenge. —COLIMIDOZ. A charming old pedant in the country, on learning that a favor-ite pupil of his had been taken upon the staff of a Boston paper, wrote to the editor-in-chief concerning the young man : "If he should have a career I shall be very happy in thinking that the spark which I have watered contained in it the germ of a structure destined to soar and elevate with its radiance your privileged readers." He also advised the editor to "give the young man a hint that may quench the seeds of ambition ere yet they swell to a gale that will take the bits between its teeth and dazzle by its clamor."—Boston Courier. At length Erasmus, that great injured name, (The glory of the priesthood, and the shame!) Stemmed the wild torrent of a barbarous age, And drove those holy Vandals off the stage—Pops. When the tongue goes upon stilts, reason spreads but half her sails.—TuoLucK. The Court of Chancery frequently mitigates and breaks the teeth of the common law.—Spectotor. Take arms against a sea of trouble.—BRAX8PEOUL CHAP. XXXII.) MIXED METAPHORS. There is not a single view of human nature which is not suffi-cient to extinguish the seeds of pride. —ADDD3ON (quoted by Camp¬bell). The ethereal multitude Whose purple locks with snow white glories shone. "Purple locks and snow-white glories," these are the things the muse talks about when, to borrow Horace Walpole's witty phrase, she is not finely frenzied, only a little light-headed, that's all.—" Purple Locks."—CHeauts LAHR, to Coleridge. As late as 1860 he wrote to one who had observed symptoms more than usually redolent of "the arrow of soft tribulations."— LADY Esau...um, Life of John Gibson. The buyer of • horse may find himself saddled tett* a worthless animal—CornAfli NapasinA July, 18138. A very painful condition, to which my reading can find no par¬allel except in the state of the old gentleman in ".sop's Fables," who, in trying to please everybody, actually tried to carry his own donkey. —BLACKLEY. If an individual can break down the safeguards which the con¬stitution has wisely and cautiously erected, by poisoning the minds of the jury at a time when they are called upon to decide, he will stab the administration of justice in its most vital part. —LORD KENYON. In sentencing a butler convicted of stealing his master's wine, he thus described the culprit's conduct : "Dead to every claim of natural affection, and blind to your own interest, you burst through all the restraints of religion and morality, and have for many years been feathering your nest with your master's bottles.—Id. The Force of simile and metaphor lies in the readi¬ness of men to perceive and accept a comparison. How charmingly, however, did the poor woman reply to the gentleman who found her watering her webs of linen cloth. She could not tell him even the text of the last sermon. "And what good can the preaching do you, if you forget it all ? " " Ah, sir, if you will look at this web ou the grass, you will see that as fast as ever I put the water on it the sun dries it all up, and yet, sir, I see it gets whiter anti whiter." This is pure wit from the a 620 FIGURATIVE LANGUAGE. [PART YE well of the imagination, and the simile is deep in it as truth.— Winos. What gives the principal delight to the imagination is the ex-hibition of a strong likeness which escapes the notice of the gen-erality of people. —CAKPBELL. The English public is not yet ripe to comprehend the essential difference between the reason and the understanding—between a principle and a maxim—an eternal truth and a mere conclusion generalized from a great number of facte. A man having seen • mil¬lion moes-ruses all red, concludes from his own experience and that of others that all moss-roses are red. That is • maxim with him—the greatest amount of his knowledge upon the subject. But it is only true until some gardener has produced • white mom- rose; after which the maxim is good for nothing. Again, suppose Adam watching the sun sinking under the western horizon for the first time; he is seised with gloom and ter¬ror, relieved by scarce a ray of hope that he shall ever see the glorious light again. The next evening when it declines his hopes are stronger, but still mixed with fear ; and even at the end of a thousand years all that • man can feel is a hope and an expectation so strong as to preclude anxiety. Now compare this in its highest degree with the assur¬ance which you have that the two sides of any triangle are greater than the third. This, demonstrated of one triangle, is seen to be eternally true of all imaginable triangles. This is a truth perceived at once by the intuitive reason, independently of experience. It is and must ever be so, multiply and vary the shapes and sizes of triangles as you may.— COLERIDGE. The Fable was regarded by Aristotle as quite different from the Parable. He taught that there are two kinds of examples, the parable and the "logos." The latter is the fable, "like those of 2Esop, and the African stories." But this difference is owing to his having considered the parable as a ease supposed, and not, as we do, a fictitious narrative. The chief distinguishing features of the fable are as follows : 1. In the fable the qualities and actions of men may often be attributed to brutal. 2. The fable is further distinguished from the Christian parable by °could:many in¬dulging Itself in raillery and revenge. In one old Greek fable, a vine says to a be-goat, 4' Though you eat me down to the root yet I will yield wine enough to pour upon your head when you ere sacrificed." CHAP. XMLII. ALLEGORY. 621 8. The fable is more commonly than the parable devoted to the inonloation of ethical precepts and prudential maxims. Herder divides fables into three kinds: a. Theoretic, or such as are intended to form the understanding ; e.g., of the dog snapping at his shadow in the water, the lamb reasoning with the wolf, or the hare hunting with the lion. Fables like these are designed to inculcate the maxims of secular wisdom. b. Moral, or those which contain rules for the regulation of the conscience and will ; as, "Go to the ant, thou sluggard, consider her ways and be wise." Here we learn that the happiness of all living creatures is connected with well-directed activity. C. Fables of destiny. As we do not always see the connection of canes and effect, we often call that the effect of fate or chance which befalls as according to the secret pur¬pose of God ; e.g., the eagle carries with her plunder a coal from the altar, which sets fire to her nest, and so her unfledged brood becomes the prey of animals which she has al¬ready robbed of their young. cf. Some ethnic fables inculcate religious duties: e.g., in the fable which represents the wagoner praying to Jupiter to lift, his wagon out of the mad. The fable suffers more than any other figure from an incongru¬ity. Thus Matthew Arnold, in discussing the question whether the Church of England ought to be disestablished, says of the cry of the Nonconformists that it is "a little like that proposal of the fox who had lost his own tail to put all the other foxes in the same boat by a general cutting off of tails." The figurative phrase "in the same boat" introduces an image remote from the fable and ridiculous in itself. The effect of such incongruities on the mind is not unlike the impression made on the eye and the fancy by putting into a magic-lantern two pictures at a time and side by side.—IbravEr. The danger in using figures of all kinds is that they will be employed for themselves, because they are orna¬mental or striking, and not because they best express the thought. The more apt and striking is the analogy suggested, the more will it have of an artificial appearance, and will draw off the read¬er's attention from the subject to admire the ingenuity displayed in the style. Young writers of genius ought especially to ask themselves frequently, not whether this or that is a striking ex¬pression, but whether it makes the meaning more striking than another phrase would—whether it impresses more forcibly the sen¬timent to be oonveyed.—WHATErz 622 FIGURATIVE LANGUAGE. VI. Another cause of obscurity in the use of imagery is an excess of imagery. This may obscure the meaning by exaggeration. It may produce the same effect by overloading a thought Imagery not needed to illustrate a thought must tend to cover it from the hearer's sight. A hearer's power of perception may be impaired by it through mental weariness. Few things are so wearisome to the brain as a rapid review of a gallery of paintings. Aside from weariness of the eye, there is an expenditure of thought in that which the spectator must supply by his own imagination. An ex¬cessively pictorial style makes a similar demand, and produces a similar effect. Mental weariness thus induced diminishes the clearness of a hearer's perception. Such a discourse, therefore, lives in his memory only as a jumble of pictures. . . . Excess of imagery is most hurtful when no imagery is needed. Take the following, from John Quincy Adams. His thought is this, that scientists have been obliged to coin nomenclatures from the Greek language. This is a pure fact in philology. In a lit¬eral statement it is perfectly clear ; it needs no pictorial represen¬tation. But Mr. Adams vaults into the imaginative saddle in this style : The sexual combinations of Linnteus, and the chemical separations of Lavoisier. are alike exhibited in Greek attire. The loves of the planbi must murmur in the MUM dia¬lect which alone can sound the dirge over the dissolution of water. Neither the miptials of the blossom, nor the generation of the gas, can be accomplished but under Grecian names. The marriage and the divorce, the generation and the destruction, have found no name by which they could walk the world, without having recourse to the language at Demosthenes and Homer. —PHELPS. Hence, some writers speak disdainfully of figures; and others, who admit their power, advise the neglect of them on the ground of their danger. A new metaphor (and the same holds, though in a lower degree, of every trope) is never regarded with indifference. If it be not a beauty, it is a blemish.—CAMPBBLL. But the young author may adopt this instrument of rhe¬toric as freely as any other, if he will rigorously hold by the fundamental principle of all good writing, that the CHAP. XXXII. USE OF FIGURES. 623 most perfect expression of the writer's exact thought is the one aim to be kept in view, and that all means that help to attain this end are as conscientiously to be em¬ployed, as all means that obscure it are to be discarded. Plutarch says that the most of those who are delighted with figures are the childish and the sensual. Such early writers as Aristotle have favored the neglect of figures by confining their chief attention to the simile and the metaphor, while such later rhetoricians as Hermogenes have confused and wearied their pu¬pils with over nice distinctions. Many authors have made the whole subject still more distasteful by uniformly quoting their ex¬amples of figures from the poets, thus conveying the impression that these forms of style are only suitable to poets. We need not wonder, therefore, that able writers on rhetoric still quote with admiration the epigram Ausonius wrote under the portrait of the rhetorician Rufus : Ipse rhetar, est imago imaginis. For all a rhetorician's rules Teach nothing but to name his toola.—Bun.sa. But a rhetorician's rules teach a man also what to do with his materials, and how to use his tools. Then, just as if it were of no use for a mechanic to have a name for his tools, and so keep them in their place and be able to call for them when wanted. Arch¬bishop Whately and his disciples have, both by precept and ex¬ample, opened the mine of figures only to close it and conceal it forever after. Mr. Henry Rogers, the reviewer, says truly of their style, that "of all its characteristics the most striking and the most general is the moderate use of the imagination." . . . Cicero compares the use of figures to the exercises of the palms¬tra. As those who study fencing and polite exercises not only think it necessary to acquire skill in parrying and striking, but also grace and elegance of motion, so the orator must use such words as not only contribute to elegance, but also to impressive¬ness. To the same purpose Quintilian says : "Figures penetrate imperceptibly into the mind of the judge. Indeed, as in a passage of arms, it is easy to see, parry, and ward off direct and undis-guised strokes, while side-blows and feints are less observable ; and as it is a proof of art to aim at one part when you intend to hit 624 FIGURATIVE LANGUAGE. VL another, so that kind of oratory which is free from artifice can fight only with its own mere weight and force ; but that kind which disguises and varies its attacks can assail the flank or rear of an enemy, can turn aside his weapons and deceive him, as it were, with a nod." . . . Lord Karnes has said that in expressing any severe passion that wholly occupies the mind, metaphor is improper. He seems to have overlooked the fact that metaphor is the natural and sponta-neous language of the all-absorbing passions. His lordship would have been nearer right if he had applied his rule to the proper use of allegories, or other long trains of implied resemblances. Dr. Carson is hardly less wrong when he affirms that, with few exceptions, grief, despair, or any of the dispiriting passions is seldom found to employ this figure. The book and lamentations of Jeremiah make short work with this theory. Some rhetoricians advise us never to make use of the same word to express metaphorically opposite ideas. Others, discussing the subject philosophically, claim to have discovered that all man¬kind make metaphors according to certain universal laws. Thus, Richter has observed that no nation calls error light, and truth darkness. But it should be remembered that, as Glassius has in-dicated, the many different qualities and attributes of the same object may be used to convey metaphorically many diverse ideas. Christ is called a lion, and so is Satan. Sleep expresses at once the hopeful repose of the blessed dead, and the false security of sinners. The sun denotes happiness and unhappiness. A shadow signifies protection ; also great perils and adversities. A river de¬notes plenty of blessings ; it likewise expresses terrors and over¬whelming evils. The harvest is used in both a good and a bad sense.—HERvEr. HOW THEY PLAY THE PIANO IN NEW ORLEANS. "I was loafing around the streets last night," said Jim Nelson, one of the oldest boo- motive engineers running into New Orleans, "and eel I had nothing to do I dropped into a concert, and heard a slick-looking Frenchman play a piano in a way that made me feel all over In spots. As soon as he sat down on the stool, I knew by the way he han-dled himself that be understood the machine he was running. He tapped the keys away up one end, just as if they were gauges, and he wanted to see if he had water enough. Then he looked up, as if he wanted to know how much steam he was carrying, and the next moment he pulled open the throttle and sailed out on the main line as if he was half an hour late. CHAP. XXXII. USE OF FIGURES. 625 "You could hear her thunder over culverts and bridges, and getting batty and faster, until the fellow rooked about in his seat like a cradle. Somehow I thought it was old ' 86' pulling a passenger train and getting out of the way of a special.' The fellow worked the keys on the middle division like lightning, and then he dew along the north cud of the line until the drivers went around like a buzz-saw, and I got excited. About the time I was fixing to tell him to out her off • hale, he kicked the dampers under the machine wide open, pulled the throttle away back in the tender, and—Jerusalem jump- era bow he did run I I couldn't stand it any longer, and yelled to him that she was 'pounding' on the left tilde, and if he wasn't careful he'd drop his ash-pan. "But he didn't hear. No one heard me. Everything was flying and whizzing. Telegraph poles on the side of the track looked like a row of corn-stalks, the trees ap-peared to be a mud-bank, and all the time the exhaust of the old machine sounded like the hum of a bumble-bee. I tried to yell out, bat my tongue wouldn't move. He went around curves like a bullet, slipped an eccentric, blew out his soft plug, went down grades fifty feet to the mile, and not a confounded brake set. She went by the meeting point at a mile and • half a minute, and calling for more steam. My hair stood up like a cat's tall, because I knew the game was up. "Sure enough, dead ahead of us was the head-light of the special.' In a daze I heard the crash as they struck, and I saw cars shivered into atoms, people mashed and mangled and bleeding and gasping for water. I heard another crash as the French pro-fessor struck the deep keys away down on the lower end of the southern division, and then I came to my senses. There he was at a dead stand-still, with the door of the fire-box of the machine open, wiping the perspiration off his face and bowing at the people before him. If I live to be a thousand years old Ili never forget the ride that Frenchman gave me on • piano."—Times-Densocrai. TOPICAL ANALYSIS. Figurative Language, p. 601. Classification of Figures, p.602. a. Figures founded on resemblance, p. 602. b. Figures founded on relation, p. 602. c. Figures having an apparent inconsistency between the literal and figurative meaning, p. 602. d. Elliptical figures, p. 602. e. Pleonastic figures, p. 602. f. Figures of arrangement, p. 602. g. Personification, apostrophe, exclamation, interjection, p. 602. h. Grammatical figures, p. 602. 1. Complex figures, p. 602. Chief Figures : a. Personification, p. 602. 626 TOPICAL ANALYSIS. VL Apostrophe, p. 603. Exclamation, p. 608. b. Metonymy, p. 604. I. Concrete and abstract, p. 604. 2. Effect and cause, p. 604. 8. Author and works, p. 604. c. Synecdoche, p. 604. d. Hyperbole, p. 604. e. Irony, p. 605. Epigram, p. 605. f. Simile, p. 605. 1. Unexpectedness, p. 606. Belittling similes, p. 606. 2, Adaptability, p. 607. Metaphor inconsistent, p. 607. g. Metaphor, p. 611. Metaphors condensed similes, p. 613. Completeness, p. 615. Mixed metaphors, p. 616. Force of simile and metaphor, p. 619. Allegory, p. 620. THE FABLE, p. 620. Distingui,shing features: 1. Qualities of men attributed to brutes, p. 620. 2. Distinguished from the Christian parable by occa¬sional raillery and revenge, p. 620. 8. Inculcates ethical principles and prudential max-ims, p. 621. Kinds of fables: a. Theoretic, p. 621. b. Moral, p. 621. c. Fables of destiny, p. 621. d. Religious fables, p. 621. Danger in using figures, p. 621. CHAPTER X RHYTHM. Though the poet's matter nature be, His art doth give the fashion. . . . For a good poet's made as well as born.—Bau JougOB. 0 many are the poets that are sown By nature, men endowed with highest gifts, The vision and the faculty divine ; Yet wanting the accomplishment of versa, Which, in the docile Reason of their youth, It was denied them to acquire, through lack Of culture, and the inspiring aid of books.—WoauSwowca. Prose and Poetry Distinguished.—We have seen that one of the characteristics of poetry is Figurative Language, and that this, though not essential to the essay and the oration, is frequent in all prose writing. We come now to Rhythm, another feature of poetry, and the one most readily recognized. This, though com-monly regarded as essential to poetry, is not merely unes¬sential, but positively weakening to prose. Hence those who have no ambition to be poets are still interested in Rhythm, which they must understand in order to be sure of avoiding it in prose. Rhythm is the recurrence of accent at regular meas-ured intervals. Sounds that are produced by regular periodical vibrations are known as tones. Such are the sounds of the voice in singing. To this steady, prolonged, anticipated sound the ear becomes ac 628 RHYTHM. [PART VL customed in singing, where tone is expected ; but in discourse a break into musical tones would be startling, and, unless to attain some peculiar effect, intolerable. It requires of the ear a read-justment, which is disagreeable because it is unreasonable. So of rhythm. In poetry the ear adjusts itself to the regular recurrence of emphasis, and is shocked if the recurrence is in-terrupted. But in prose no such recurrence of emphasis is ex-pected. When the ear first perceives it, it is incredulous ; the attention is distracted from the meaning in the effort to listen closely and see if indeed what purports to be prose has been measured out into metrical feet ; and if this proves to be true, the ear is disgusted at the lack of fitness. In going down stairs, the foot learns the intervals, and descends easily in absolute darkness, accepting regular intervals as charac¬teristic of stairs ; but in free walking one rebels against having his steps measured for him. Nothing more fatigues one than to stride from tie to tie on a railroad track. One form of favorite mechanism in construction is that in which a regular succession occurs, like the swing of a pendulum. In other instances in which one feels the sense of monotony, but cannot at once detect the cause, it is found, on a closer scrutiny, that the sentences have more than two variations, but they occur in one invariable order, with the sameness of a treadmill. Dr. Johnson's style sometimes falls into this monotone of mechanism. Hazlitt criticises it, saying that to read or to hear such passages from Johnson's writings is as bad as being at sea in a calm, in which one feels the everlasting monotony of the ground-swell. Charles Dickens sometimes falls under the tyranny of his ear in composing ; and then his style assumes an arbitrary succession of a few constructions, in which thought is subordinated to euphony of expression. A roll and a swell and a return, in the boom of the style, if I may speak so incongruously, destroy the sense of everything but the sound. One is tempted to chant the passage. —PHELPS. Robert G. Ingersoll, in a recent interview, talked in this way of George Eliot. The statement appears as prose, but the merest typographical arrangement makes it passable blank verse, as wit-ness: CHAP. XXXM. RHYTHM IN PROSE. 629 She carried in her tender heart The burdens of our race. She looked Through pity's tears upon the faults And frailties of mankind. She knew The springs and seeds of thought and deed, And saw with cloudless eyes through all The winding ways of greed, ambition, And deceit—where folly vainly plucks, With thorn-pierced bands the fading flowers Of selfish joy—the highway of eternal light. Whatever her relations may have been, No matter what I think or others say, Or how much all regret The one mistake in all her loving life, I feel and know that in the fearlees court Where her own conscienoe sat as !melt judge, She stood acquitted, pure as lights And stainless as a star. At this rate the colonel will prove a formidable rival to the spring poets and to the sweet singer of Michigan.—Albany Argus. Of the same speaker the New York Sun makes another criticism, based on the sound rule that prose is never to seem attired in the garb of poetry. As an orator Colonel Ingersoll, of Peoria, drops too much into the sing-song, and as a rhetorician he indulges too frequently a weakness for alliterative speech. Here are a few random phrases from his address in the Academy of Music night before last : "The chill of chains." "Shared the gloom and glory of the seven sacred years." "The war was waged and won." "Forged new fetters for their fellow-men." "Our fathers fought for freedom." "The stream went singing to the seas." "Made merchandise of men." "Mere legal lies, mean and meaningless, base and baseless." The habit seems to be growing on the Colonel, and he will no doubt be obliged to us for pointing out the fact. An excessive dependence upon alliteration's artful aid may mar the effect of extremely eloquent.elocution. 630 RHYTIOL [PART VT. Critics differ as to whether poetry must be rhyth-mical. On the one hand : After some preliminary remarks, the lecture really commences with the answer to the question, What is poetry ? To this Mr. Dobell replies that "Poetry is whatever may congruously form part of a poem ; perfect poetry is whatever may congruously form part of a perfect poem," an answer, as it appears to us, not unlike the well-known one to the question of, What was an archdeacon ? "A man who discharges archdiaconal functions." He then pro¬ceeds to consider the nature of a perfect poem, and in order to do this he assumes that "it is the perfect expression of a perfect mind." There seems here to be a tacit assumption that a per¬fect mind could only find its expression in poetry ; but there is ap¬parently no reason why such a mind should not find its manifesta¬tion in prose equally well ; for in the definition given by Mr. Dobell of a perfect poem—i.e., the expression of the attributes to know, to love, to worship, and to order—there is nothing which would be inconsistent with prose. The consequence of this theory would be that metre is unessential to poetry, a consequence which is definitely accepted by Walt Whitman and the more extreme members of the spasmodic school generally, but which has as yet found but little credence with the public in general.--Speciator, July 1, 1876. On the other: First and foremost, the representation must be a representation in language, and not only in language but in verse or rhythm. - ALFRED Ammar. The pleasure afforded by poetic rhythm is that of expecting the fulfilment of a recognized law of cadence, while the pleasure afforded by prose rhythm is that its cadences shall come upon us by surprise.—Appleton's Journal. Thirdly, I deduce the position from all the causes elsewhere as¬signed, which render metre the proper form of poetry, and poetry imperfect and defective without metre. . . . It is indeed worthy of remark that all our great poets have been CHAP. MM. RHYTHM IN POETRY. 631 good prose writers, as Chaucer, Spenser, Milton ; and this proba¬bly more from their just sense of metre. For a true poet will never confound verse and prose ; whereas it is almost character¬istic of indifferent prose writers that they should be constantly slipping into scraps of metre. . . . Poetry is not the proper antithesis to prose but to science. Poetry is opposed to science, and prose to metre.—CoLFaunez. Again, Coleridge says : The definition of good Prose is—proper words in their proper places ; of good Verse—the most proper words in their proper places. The propriety in either case is relative. The words in prose ought to express the intended meaning and no more ; if they attract attention to themselves it is in general a fault. . . . But in verse you must do more ; there the words, the media, must be beautiful, and ought to attract your notice—yet not so much and so perpetually as to destroy the unity which ought to result from the whole poem (vi. 468). Henry Morley defines prose as follows : The word prose means straightforward. It is derived from the Latin prorsus, and so was the name of a Roman goddess, Prorsa, also called Prose, who presided over births with the head foremost. Prose signifies, therefore, the direct manner of common speech, without twists or unusual ways of presentation. He remarks thus upon Coleridge's definition : The definition may be handy, but it is not true. No writer of prose would wish to use second-best words. Setting aside the difference that lies deep in the nature of thought, there remains only the mechanical distinction that verse is a contrivance for ob-taining by fixed places of frequently recurring pause and elevation of the voice, by rhyme and other devices, a large number of places of fixed emphasis, that cause stress to be laid on every important word, while they set thought to music. Whatever will bear this continuous enforcement is fit matter for verse ; but the custom¬ary, though put into words that fit it perfectly, are therefore the best, is less intense, and therefore is best expressed in the straight¬forward method of our customary speech. 632 RHYTHM. VI. Good poetry might be defined "elegant and decorated lan-guage in metre, expressing such and such thoughts," and good prose composition as "such and such thoughts expressed in good lan-guage ; " that which is primary in each being subordinate in the other.—WHATELY. Again, Coleridge will not hear of the doctrine that between the language of prose and that of metrical composition there is no essential difference. For since poetry implies more passion and greater excitement of all the faculties than prtoe, this excitement most make itself felt in the language that expresses it. Of this excited natural feeling, metre is the natural vehicle—metre, which has its origin in emotion, tempered and mastered by will ; or, as Coleridge expresses it, metre, which is the result of the balance which the mind strikes by voluntary effort to check the working of passion. Hence as the use of metrical language implies a union of spontaneous impulse and voluntary purport., both of these elements ought to reflect themselves in the poet's diction. . . But however and whenever the one inspiring impulse finds words to embody it. one thing is certain,—that embodiment must be in language which has in it rhythm and melody. . . . Prose, Coleridge used to my, is the opposite not of poetry, but of verse or metre—a doctrine which, however contrary to common parlance, commends itself at once to all who think about it. If, as I have been accustomed in three lectures to my, "poetry is the ex¬pression, in twrautiful form and melodious language, of the best thoughts and the noblest emotions which the spectacle of life awakens in the finest souls," it is clear that this may be effected by prose as truly as by verse, if only the language be rhythmical and beauti¬ful. . . . In that emay he (Mr. Shadworth Hodgson) says "Metro is not necemary to poetry, while poetry is necessary to metre." Again, "Prose, when it rises into poetry, becomes as nearly musical as language without metre can be : it becomes rhythmical."— FigalltP. Perhaps no stronger support could be given the theory that rhythm is essential to poetry than the fact that Mr. Ruskin, in a book recently published on "Elements of English Prosody," now holds that the definition of poetry? in the opening of the third volume of "Modern Painters" is defective, and adds to it the words in italics: Poetry is the presentment, in musical form, to the imagination of noble grounds for the noble emotions. Leigh Hunt says: Fitness and unfitness for song or metrical excitement just make all the difference between a poetical and a prosaic subject ; and the reason why verse is necessary to the form of poetry is, that the perfection of poetical spirit demands it ; that the circle of enthu CRAP. XXXIII. VERSIFICATION. • 633 siasm, beauty, and power is incomplete without it. I do not mean to say that a poet can never show himself a poet in prose ; but that, being one, his desire and necessity will be to write in verse ; and that if he were not able to do so, he would not and could not deserve his title. VERSIFICATION. English Verse is characterized by Rhythm, or the recurrence of stress, beat, or accent, at regular intervals. In this respect, English metre differs from the classical metres, which are constructed principally according to the quantity of syl¬lables ; though modified by the rhythm in many instances. Thus, in English verse, we speak of syllables as accented or unaccented, while Latin verse is measured by syllables regarded as long or short. RHYME is given to a large proportion of English verse, but is by no means essential. Indeed the noblest verse is free from its hampering restrictions. Perfect rhymes must comply with the following rules: (a) The vowel sounds and final consonants of the rhym¬ing syllables must be the sante ; and the consonant sounds preceding them must be different. Thus, r-ing rhymes with s-ing, k-ing, sl-ing; but not with s-ang, or k-ind, or err-ing. (b) The rhyming syllables must both have the strong accent. Thus, ring rhymes with sing, but not with pletising. When the second line ends in a trisyllable, accented on the ante-penultimate, no accent is required on the ultimate. © The penultimate syllables may rhyme, provided the ultimates are identical and weak in accent. Thus, bedr-ing rhymes with tedr-ing. (d) The antepenultimate syllables may rhyme, provided 634 RHYTHM. VI. the two last syllables are identical in the two lines, and both are weak in accent. Thus, imp6r-tunate rhymes withfir-tunate. The Rhythm sometimes requires words to be slightly changed in pronunciation, so as to suit a particular measure. This is done— (1) By contraction, so as to reduce the number of syllables. Thus, 'fit, for it is; o'er, for over ; tn'en, for taken ; roe, for I have; cureeting'ee, for cunningest ; Doter, for power; /Diego'', for spiritual; m'ght-ieet, for mightiest. (2) By expansion, to increase the number of syllables. Thus, tA(o)rough, for through ; command(e)ment, for commandment ; drenched, for drenched ; for nation. The number of words in the English language which form per¬fect rhymes is so limited that some slight deviations from the above rules are sanctioned by the practice of the best poets, and are called allowable rhymes. In allowable rhymes the final con¬sonant sounds remain the same, and the vowel sound is modified. Thus, sun, upon; adores, powers; war, car; love, move; Met, coast. EXERCISE.—Give perfect rhymes for each of the follow-ing words: Grace, match, detract, gladden, invade, safe, epitaph, chain, taking, flame, trance, chant, lapse, beware, grave. Speech, creak, conceal, extreme, gleaning, heard, cease, death, shred, steed, sweep, offence, islander, wariness, bedew. Bribe, slid, Ides, midst, defy, brief, drift, thrilling, guileless, shrine, spring, sire, desist, united, driven, guise, lisp. Throb, shewed, scoffer, voice, anoint, spoke, golden, stolen, prone, song, brood, roofless, gloomy, grope, forswore. Rude, judge, skull, overruling, sun, importune, blunt, spur, numberless, birds, nurse, dangerous, persecute, mistrust. Point out which of the following rhymes are allowable, and which are to be condemned. Show what rules the latter violate. So some rats of amphibious nature, Are either for the land or water.—Burran. CHAP. XXXII' I MEASURES. 635 Wine or delicious fruits unto the taste, • A music in the ears will ever last—Joassoar. Yet to his guest though no way sparing, He ate himself the rind and paring.—Pow. And pulpit, drum ecclesiastic, Was beat with list instead of a stick.—Bruss. That jelly's rich, this wine is healing, Pray dip your whiskers and your tail in.—Pow.. Whose yielded pride and proud submission, Her heart did melt in great compaasion.—SPzawa. Pleased to the last he crops the Bowery food, And licks the hand just rats xi to shed his blood.—Pops. Let not ambition mock their useful toil, Nor grandeur hear with a disdainful smIle.—Goar. Mach converse do I find in thee, Historian of my infancy.—WORDISWORTH. Oh 1 not in cruelty, not in wrath, 'Tway an angel visited the green earth.—Logorzlzow. "You can't," said Tom to lisping Bill, "Find any rhyme for month."— " There you mithtake," din Bill reply, "I'll and a rhyme at wonth." I wish I were a cassowary Upon the plains of Timbuctoo ; I'd like to eat a missionary, Flesh and bones and hymn-book too. Measures (or Feet) are the equivalent parts, each consisting of some uniform combination of accented and unaccented syllables, into which the line (or verse) is di¬vided. Three kinds of feet give a fair clue to English versi-fication, and are all that we need here to consider. These are : (a) Iambic, in which the even syllables are accented ; as, And for 1 this draught 1 all kinds 1 of fruit, Grape For 1 -up, squares 1 of col 1 -ored ice, With char 1 -ries served 1 in drifts 1 of .now.—Sfct Zing In Bokhata. 636 RHYTHM. [PART VL • (b) Trochaic, in which the odd syllables are ac-cented; as, In her lovely I silken murmur.—Lady Geraldine. (c) Anapaestic, in which two unaccented syllables are followed by an accented one ; as, I have read I in an old I and • mar I -vellous tale. When the accented syllable comes first, the feet are called Dactyls ; as, • Jupiter, I great and om I -nipotent. The Pause (or CEesura) is that point in the verse (or line) where the sense. and rhythm both admit of a mo¬mentary interruption of the latter. The pause cannot be made in the middle of a word ; but, with this exception, it may fall at any part of the verse. Besides the pause in the course of the line, there is generally one also at the end of the line, as there the sense is usually interrupted. Not always, however ; e.g.: Nor content with such Audacious neighbourhood.—MILTON. What cannot you and I perform I upon The unguarded Duncan ? j What not put upon His spuogy OffiCer9 —SE AESPERZ. Variety is given to verse as follows : (a) Other feet than those that characterize the stanza are introduced ; as, How sweetly did they float upon the wing. Of silence through the empty-vaulted night, At every fall smoothing the raven down Of darkness till it smiled. —MILTON. Here the third foot of the third verse is a trochaic instead of an iambic. (b) Syllables are appended to the verse after the regular measure is completed ; as, Wherefore I rejoice? That Cos I -ar comas in in -nmph ?—fia•asenase. CHAP. X.XXM I VARIETY IN VERSE. 687 (c) The first foot is contracted ; as, Or ugh 1 .ered with 1 a show 1 -er still, When 1 the gust 1 bath blown 1 his 111L—mumoi. The last line might be read as trochaic : When the 1 gust bath 1 blown his 1 au. From isolated lines, sometimes even from stanzas, it is impossi¬ble to determine whether the measure of the poem is iambic or trochaic. (d) The pause is always varied in good verse; as, The quality of mercy 1 is not strained. 1 It droppeth, as the gentle rain from heav'n" Upon the place beneath. I It is twice blesed ; It blesseth him that gives, 1 and him that takes. 'Tie mightiest in the mightiest ; 1 it becomes' The thron6d monarch better than his crown. 1 -Anus:am In this passage, the pauses occur in the different lines respec-tively after the following syllables : First line, seventh and tenth ; second line, third ; third line, sixth and tenth ; fourth line, sev-enth and tenth ; fifth line, seventh ; sixth line, tenth. (e) By combining verses of different lengths, and varying the order of rhymes ; as, No war, or battles sound, Was heard the world around; The idle spear and shield were high uphung. The hooked chariot stood, lInstain'd with hostile blood ; The trumpet spoke not to the armed throng; And kings sat still with awful eye, As if they surely knew their sovran Lord was by.— Nwrox, Ode on Me Nativity. (f) Broken verses are often introduced in blank verse, especially in dramatic dialogue, where frequently one part of a verse is spoken by one person, and the rest by another ; as, 8Itytock. Cursed be my tribe, If I forgive him Bassani°. Shylock, do you hear 7-43NAMPAnsi. 638 RHYTHM. [PART VI. Shakspere often uses these broken verses in the quick inter-change of passionate dialogue, and to indicate abrupt changes of feeling. Irregular Measure is a term applied to verse which is not composed of complete feet. Such verse usually lacks one or more syllables at the close, owing to the awk-wardness of double rhymes, and the tendency to throw off a final weak syllable. The general character of irregular measure is cheerful and lively. Irregular verses are of various lengths, from one foot to eight ; but the most common are Tetrameters (complete and defective), as, Tell me not in mournful numbers, "Life is but an empty dream," For the soul is dead that slumbers, And things are not what they seem.—LostirEzzow. Or with a different arrangement Of rhymes— RI his chamber, weak and dying, Was the Norman boron lying: Loud, without, the tempest thundsed, And the castle turret shook. In this fight was death the gainer, 'Spite of vassal and retainer, And the lands his Rhea had plundeed Written in the Doomsday Book.—ID. Or defective Tetrameters throughout— Ocher Romans shall arise, Heedless of a soldier's name ; Bounds, not arms, shall win the prize, Harmony the path to fame.—Cowesa. This measure predominates in Milton's " L'Allegro." Tenny-son also employs it, as in "The Lady of Shalott," which is irregu-lar in the general character of its verse. The refrain in every stanza is a regular Trimeter, and there is only one stanza in the whole poem in which the other verses are irregular throughout : Willows whiten. aspens quiver, Little breezes dusk and shiver Thro' the wave that rune for ever By the island in the river Flowing down to Camelot. • CHAP. XXXIILj HEROIC MEASURE. 639 Your gray walls and four gray tswers Overlook a space of &men, And the silent isle embowers The Lady of Shelett. But in the latter part of the next stanza, he breaks into the regular measure : But whd hath seen her wave her hand ? Or at the casement seen her stand ? Or is she known in all thc land, The Lady of Bhalott? Irregular verse is generally rhymed : but Longfellow has writ-ten a long Indian epic poem, "Hiawatha," in unrhymed irregular Tetrameters ; e.g.: There the little Hiawatha Learned of every bird its language, Learned their names and all their secrets, How they built their nests in summer, Where they hid themselves in winter, Talked with them where'er he met them, Called them " Hlawatha's chickens." Of all beasts he learned the language, Learned their names and all their secrets, How the Mayers built their lodges, Where the squirrels hid their acorns, How the reindeer ran so swiftly, Why the rabbit was so timid, Talked with them where'er he met them, Called them "Hiawatha'. Brothers." Heroic Measure (Pentameter) is made up of five iainbic feet. In its rhymed form it is the measure of Chaucer and Spenser, of Dryden and Pope, of Cowper, Campbell, and Byron ; as, True ease in writing comes from art, not chance As those move eivdest who have learn'd to dance. 'TM not enough no harshness gives offence; The sound must seem an echo to the sense. Soft is the strain when Zephyr gently blows, And the smooth strain in smoother numbers Sows; But when loud surges Moth the sounding shore, The hoarse, rough voice should like the torrent mem—Ppm In its unrhymed form it is the stately and solemn blank 640 • RHYTHM. [PART VL verse of Shakspere and Milton, as of Wordsworth and Tennyson ; as, Now came still Evening on, and Twilight gray Had in her sober livery all things clad; Silence accompanied ; for beast and bird, They to their grassy couch, these to their nada, Were slunk, all but the wakeful nightingale ; She all night long her amorous descant sung.—Mrtacnv. The Elegiac Stanza is made up of four iambic pentameters rhyming alternately ; as, Full many a gem of purest ray serene, The dark unfathonici caves of ocean bear ; Full many a tiow'r is born to blush unseen, And waste its sweetness on the desert air.—Gacr„ The Spenserian Stanza is made up of eight iam¬bic pentameters, followed by an iambic hexameter (or Alexandrine) first used by Spenser, and a favorite form with Thomson and Byron. The nine lines contain only three rhymes disposed thus, b, c, b, c c, d, c, d, d; e.g.: It fortuned, out of the thickest wood A ramping lion rushed suddenly, Hunting full greedy after salvage blood; Soon as the royal virgin he did spy, With gaping month at her ran greedily, To have at once devoned her tender wet*: But to the prey whenas he drew more nigh, His bloody rage assuaged with remorse, And with the sight amazed, forgot his furious forte. -SPEZMILB. The Sonnet contains fourteen iambic pentameters. Great license is allowed in the order of the rhymes. Thus : Surrey uses only two rhymes ; making the sonnet seven coup¬lets. Spenser uses five rhymes ; the first nine lines being a Spenser¬ian stanza, and the last five corresponding with the last five of the same stanza. Shakspere uses seven rhymes, making his sonnet equal to three elegiac stanzas and a couplet ; as, be be I de de I fg fgI 1112 CHAP. =II.) • ROMANTIC MEASURE. 641 Wordsworth uses three rhymes, of which one runs throughout the whole sonnet thus : Weak is the will of man, his judgment blind, Remembrance persecutes, and hope betrays; Heavy is woe, and joy, for humankind A mournful thing, so transient is the blase Thus might he paint our lot of mortal days, Who wants the glorious faculty assigned To elevate the more than reasoning mind, And color life's dark cloud with orient rays. Imagination is that sacred power, Imagination lofty and refined; 'Ti. her's to pluck the amaranthine flower Of faith, and round the sufferer's temple bind Wreaths that endure affliction's heaviest shower, And do not shrink from sorrow's keenest wind.—Woanswoara. Romantic Measure is made up of iambic tetrame¬ters, rhymed, and either in couplets, or varied by trime¬ters ; as, He was a man of middle age; In aspect manly, grave and rage, As on king's errand come ; But in the glances of his eye, A penetrating, keen, and sly Expression found its home.--Scorr. The Tennysonlan Stanza is made up .4 four iam¬bic tetrameters, with two rhyming verses used between two others, best known in the poem "In Memoriam." Thus: I hold it truth with him who sings To one clear harp in divers tones, That men may rise on stepping-stones Of their dead selves to higher things. Iambic Trimeters ate seldom used by themselves, though they are found in Shakspere's lyrics. Thus : Blow, blow, thou winter wind, Thou art not so unkind As man's icgratitude; Thy tooth is not so keen Because thou art not seen, Although thy breath be rude.—As You Ltte 642 RHYTHM. [PART VI. Ballads and Hymns are composed mainly of tetra-meters and trimeters alternating. The other forms in which iambic measure occurs, are either va¬rieties of those already explained, or parts or multiples of them. The long verses of seven and eight feet may generally be written as two verses of four and three, and of four and four feet respec¬tively. Thus the first line of the "Battle of Ivry," which is gen¬erally printed as one Heptameter, may be printed, as a Tetrameter and a Trimeter : Now glory to the Lord of Hosts, From whom all glories are l—MAOALTIAT. Anapaestic Measure is rarely found pure, even in single lines. For example, in Beattie's "Hermit," out of forty-eight lines, only four are pure complex verses ; all the others have a simple foot at the commencement ; e.g.: At the close And mor When nought And nought of the day I when the ham -let is still, -tale the sweets I of forget -fulness prove, but the tor I -rent is heard on the hill, but the night Angale's song in the grove.—BLATTIE. Sometimes, however, a line thus defective at the beginning, is counterbalanced by an excessive syllable in the preceding line, thus: 'Vs the last I rose of sum I -met, Left bloom, -tog alone. ! —HOWL& in which case the lines printed as one verse would be pure; as, 'Tin the last I rose of sum I -met, left bloom I -tog alone. The commonest forms of this complex measure are the Trime¬ter ; as, I am monarch of all I survey, My right there is none to dispute : From the centre all round to the sea, I am lord of the fowl and the brute.—COWPIL and the Tetrameter ; as, CHAP. XXXii.i. EXERCISES. 643 and the widows of Ashur are loud in their wail And the idols are broke in the temple of Beal; And the might of the Gentile. unsmote by the sword, Bath melted like snow in the glanse of the Lord.—Braon. EXERCISE. —Arrange each of the following sentences into a Heroic couplet : This man would soar to heaven by his own strength, and would not be obliged for more to God. How art thou misled, vain, wretched creature, to think thy wit bred these God-like notions. She made a little stand at every turn, and thrust her lily hand among the thorns to draw the rose, and she shook the stalk, every rose she drew, and brush'd the dew away. (Four lines.) Whoever thinks to see a faultless piece, thinks what never shall be, nor ever was, nor is. Sometimes men of wit, as men ot breeding, must commit less errors, to avoid the great. The hungry judges soon sign the sentence, and that jurymen may dine, wretches hang. Arrange each of the following into Iambic Tetrameters, rhyming : He soon stood on the steep hill's verge, that looks o'er Brank¬some's towers and wood ; and martial murmurs proclaimed from below the southern foe approaching. (Four lines.) Of mild mood was the Earl, and gentle ; the vassals were rude, and warlike, and fierce ; haughty of word, and of heart high, they reeked little of a tame liege lord. (Four lines.) A lion, worn with cares, tired with state affairs, and quite sick of pomp, resolved to pass his latter life in peace, remote from strife and noise. (Four lines.) I felt as, when all the waves that o'er thee dash, on a plank at sea, whelm and upheave at the same time, and towards a desert realm hurl thee. (Four lines.) No more, sweet Teviot, blaze the glaring bale-fires on thy silver tide ; steel-clad warriors ride along thy wild and willowed shore no longer. (Four lines, rhyming alternately.) His eyes of swarthy glow he rolls fierce on the hunter's quiver'd 644 RHYTHM. VL hand,--spurns the sand with black hoof and horn, and tosses his mane of snow high, (Four lines, rhyming alternately.) Where late the green ruins were blended with the rock's wood¬cover'd side, turrets rise in fantastic pride, and between flaunt leudal banners. (Four lines, rhyming alternately.) Whate'er befall, I hold it true ; when I sorrow most, I feel it ; -better than never to have loved at all, 'tis to have loved and lost. (Tennysonian Stanza.) TOPICAL ANALYSIS. Rhythm. Prose and poetry distinguished, p. 627. Definition of rhythm, p. 627. Critics differ as to whether poetry must be rhythmical, p. 680. VERSIFICATION, p. 638. " English verse, p. 633. RHYME, p. 633. Rules for Rhyme, p. 683. a. Vowel sounds and final consonants, p. 683. • b. Accent of rhyming syllables, p. 633. c. Penultimate syllables, p 633. d. Antepenultimate syllables, 633 Words are changed to meet the requirements of rhythm : 1. By contraction, p. 634. 2. By expansion, p. 634. Measures, p. 635. a. Iambic, p. 635. b. Trochaic, p. 636. c. Anapaestic, p. 636. Dactyls, p 636. The pause, p. 636. Variety is peen by : a. Introducing other feet, p. 686. b. Appending syllables, p. 636. c. Contracting the first foot, p. 687. d. Varying the pause, p. 687. e. Combining verses of different lengths, p. 687. f. Introducing broken verses, p. 637. Irregular measure, p. 638. Heroic measure, p. 639. The elegiac stanza, p. 640. The Spenserian stanza, p. 640. The sonnet, p. 640. Romantic measure, p. 641. The Tennysonian stanza, p. 641. Iambic trimeters, p. 641. Ballads and hymns, p. 642. Anapaestic measure, p. 642. Exercises, p. 648. [[category:poetry]